ARCHIVE FOR The Writing Life

This month, the DeadDarlings team examined what it takes to share your work with the wider world. Here is how to silence your inner critic and put your best pitching foot forward

Overcome Your Fear (or fake courage)
Milo Todd comes clean and shares that No, Your Imposter Syndrome Won't Magically Go Away, but don't let that stop you.

My daughters were supposed to be getting ready for bed when I walked into their room and found my four-year-old naked, kneeling on all fours with her butt in the air, her older sister slapping her bottom.

What are you doing? I asked.

Playin’ the drums, my older daughter said.

And though part of me was relieved to see my four-year-old finally using her butt for something other than a wind instrument, I immediately stopped the show and escorted her to the shower.

This month we looked at the many milestones for writers looking for publication from theDeadDarlings office. Here is some of our best advice and musings for key steps along the way.

Take a Delightful Detour
Jerry Whelan explains how his fascination with long-dead New England abolitionists and digging for his own ancestral roots combine in his fiction in DNA, Memory and Fiction as Magic: A True Story.

Monitor Your Spedometer
Sharissa Jones talks about pacing your store by Choosing Between the Part and Present Tense.  

Toot Your Own Horn
If you have trouble selling your novel, check out ...

As we gear up for April's Muse and the Marketplace Conference, where this year many presenters will be talking about writerly rules and rule-breaking, we asked the Grub community for their favorite rule-breaking books. This is a non-exhaustive list of Grubbie recommendations.

GrubStreet Instructor and Consultant Cara Benson on what it takes to stay focused on a long-term project in our hyper-stimulated times.

It’s news to no one that we live in a hyped-up, hyperlinked world that operates at the speed of the scandal-driven media cycle. Our phones alert us to the latest attention-grabbing incident the instant the headline is written, often without our bidding (just how do you turn that function off?). The internet, where the majority of us receives our news, traffics in trending topics, jump-cutting GIFs, and LIVE streaming videos—all literally blinking in an effort to get us ...